Petrarch's and Shakespeare's sonnets
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The sonnets of Petrarch and Shakespeare represent, in the history of this major poetic form, the two most significant developments in terms of technical consolidation—by renovating the inherited material—and artistic expressiveness—by covering a wide range of subjects in an equally wide range of tones. Both writers cemented the sonnet's enduring appeal by demonstrating its flexibility and lyrical potency through the exceptional quality of their poems.
Sonnet structure
The
William Shakespeare utilized the sonnet in love poetry of his own, employing the sonnet structure conventionalized by English poets Wyatt and Surrey. This structure, known as the English or Shakespearean sonnet, consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet. The rhyme scheme is a simple ABAB CDCD EFEF GG format. The effect is “like going for a short drive with a very fast driver: the first lines, even the first quatrain, are in low gear; then the second and third accelerate sharply, and ideas and metaphors flash past; and then there is a sudden throttling-back, and one glides to a stop in the couplet”.[1] Like Petrarch, Shakespeare used structure to explore the multiple facets of a theme in a short piece.
Example of Petrarchan sonnet
In what bright realm, what sphere of radiant thought |
A |
- —Translation by Joseph Auslander of Petrarch,
While the poem as a whole aims at praising love, the focus shifts at the break between octave and sestet. In the first eight lines, the speaker poses a series of questions in admiration of a beloved; the last six lament the man who has not experienced love.
Example of Shakespearean sonnet
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? |
A |
- —From Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
The beloved, whose beauty Shakespeare idolizes here, is given the gift of immortality by the poet; the first two quatrains primarily address different ways in which the physical beauty of the material world inherently dims, fades, and/or falls short of ideal beauty at some point. In the third quatrain the poet presents his beloved with the gift of immortality in his lines of verse. The changing rhymes emphasize the dualist nature of beauty (how those things which are beautiful in their prime inevitably grow old, fade, and die), while the alternating pattern provides continuity. The independently rhymed couplet introduces yet another shift in the poem; the speaker reiterates how his beautiful beloved will be eternally preserved as long as men can breathe and see, and as long as the poem exists the beloved does, too.
Comparing sonnet sequences
The term sonnet sequence might be rephrased as series or cycle of sonnets. Sonnets become more significant when they are read in the order that the poet places them, as opposed to reading them at random. Thus, the most unusual aspect of such a sequence is the sense of a “unity within a larger unity."[2]
Sonnet sequences do not follow a spelled-out narrative progression, nor are they simply compilations of random poems with similar themes, “they are something in between."
Many
It is thought that the English inherited the Italian structure of the sonnet sequence from
Petrarch wrote and revised his famous sequence
There is a triple focus to all sonnet sequences that was originally put forth by the Italian model: “the poet-lover’s passion, the beloved who must be celebrated and won, and the poetry, which unites lover and beloved”.
For these two sonneteers, ending the sequence proves to be difficult in that the goal of winning the beloved is not achieved. Though normally coveted, the “open-ended structure and sequential movement of the sequence offer no logical stopping place”.[15] Also, the fact that the second part of the sequence must act like the couplet of an individual sonnet not only creates an imbalance in the sequence, but it also puts pressure on the poet to make sure the ending has “special force”.[15] The three main strategies that English sonneteers end up choosing from are: stopping abruptly in medias res; achieving detachment by moving into a different mode, genre, or voice; or providing a narrative resolution. Petrarch opted for the second strategy by moving into a religious mode. Shakespeare also chose the second strategy by moving into a renaissance mode, focusing on projecting his fears and desires onto Cupid. A series of complaints can also be found in the concluding sonnets of Shakespeare's sequence, which “justify the beloved’s chastity and break the identification with the poet-lover”.[16] In both Petrarch's and Shakespeare's sequences, the indicated release—whether by death or by time—“releases the lover and the sequence abruptly shifts gears”.[17]
Ovidian influences in the sonnets
Ovid's completion of the Metamorphoses ensured that, as he puts it, part of him will survive the death of his own body.[b] The phrasing at the end of the Metamorphoses, in the account of Hercules' transfiguration upon Oeta[c] and the likening of poetic achievement to spiritual transcendence captures some of the most extravagant claims that western culture has made for such achievement.
Ovid was a uniquely important influence of Petrarch. Among the Ovidian texts to which Petrarch was attracted was one of those that Shakespeare fancied, and he gives it almost exactly Shakespeare's spin.[d]
Laura, left behind in
This incorporation of the Metamorphoses into lyricism has momentous consequences for the following history of
We find this phrase's English equivalent twice in Shakespeare's Sonnets.[e] In neither case, however, is the context the same as that of Ovid's. Shakespeare makes such boasts in the Sonnets, and they owe much to Ovidian precedent; but this particular phrase has migrated into different territory, the lover's affirmation of a transcendent dependence on the beloved. Ovid never writes this way of Corinna in his Amores, where she is only an occasional longing; it is unmistakably his desire, not her merit that animates the Amores. Shakespeare, however, regards the beloved object highly as the all-inclusive focus. Indeed, justification of the lover's existence marks the decisive new start for European love poetry in the thirteenth century.
Despite Shakespeare's interest in and references of Ovid in his Sonnets, the second decade of the seventeenth century brought about a departure from the Ovidian territory that Renaissance sonneteering had cultivated. Shakespeare tended to ban mythology from his Sonnets. Of the few mythological allusions Shakespeare incorporates into the sonnets, seldom are they depicted in the same way Ovid depicts them in his Metamorphoses. In Sonnet 53, Adonis is paired with Helen as an exemplar of human beauty (53.5, 7); Mars’ name appears, though not Venus (55.7); ‘heavie Saturne’ laughs and dances with ‘proud pide Aprill’ (98.2–4); the nightingale is called Philomel (102.7) and the phoenix is mentioned (19.4). In the procreation sonnets, a reference to the myth of Narcissus is clearly intended by Shakespeare.[f][g][19]
Moreover, the latter half of the Sonnets depicts less flesh in the form of seduction. In the dark lady poems, the seduction has already succeeded; its consequences[h] are overwhelmingly shame and anger. Desire in the young man is of a different order, intense but also idealized and Platonic in a way which male Petrarchists writing about women often attempt but seldom achieve. Shakespeare calls his young man "sweet boy" (108, 5) and alludes occasionally to "rosie lips and cheeks" (116, 9), but is otherwise restrained and abstract.
Petrarch's and Shakespeare's lovers
Although Petrarch is accredited with perfection of the sonnet, Shakespeare still made changes in sonnet form and composition 200 years after Petrarch's death. While Petrarch's sonnets focused mainly on one hub, Shakespeare developed many subjects within his themes such as insomnia, slave of love, blame, dishonesty, and sickness. Despite creating complicated plots, Shakespeare also manages to place ulterior motifs among his two lovers, building new poetic form where Petrarch left off.
Petrarch's sonnets were dedicated solely to Laura. She is thought to be an imaginary figure [
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
Coral is far more red than her lips' red— Lines 1 and 2 of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130
The dark lady is not shown as beautiful or idolized as Petrarch portrayed his love, Laura.
Notes and references
Notes
- ^ Almost all of the quotations for the remainder of this comparison are extracted from pages 360–384 of Carol Thomas Neely’s “The Structure of English Renaissance Sonnet Sequence”. A reference is noted for the one exception in paragraph four.
- ^ "Still in my better part I shall be borne immortal far beyond the lofty stars and I shall have an undying name." (Metamorphoses, XV, 875–876)
- ^ "he gained new vigour in his better part." (Metamorphoses, IX, 269)
- ^ "Alas, if by speaking I renew the burning desire that was born the day I left behind the better part of me, and if love can be cured by the long forgetfulness, who then forces me back to the bait so that my pain may grow? And why do I not first turn to stone in silence?" (Canzoniere, XXXVII, 49–56)
- ^ "Oh how thy worth with manners may I singe, / When thou art all the better part of me?" (Sonnet 39, 1–2); and "My spirit is thine, the better part of me" (Sonnet 74, 8)
- ^ "Oh, I am he! I have felt it, I know now my own image. I burn with love of my own self; I both kindle the flames and suffer them. . . . the very abundance of my riches beggars me" (Metamorphoses, III, 463–464 and 466)
- ^ "But thou contracted to thine owne bright eyes, / Feed’st thy lights flame with selfe substaintial fewell, / Making a famine where aboundance lies" (Sonnet 1, 5–7)
- ^ "Injoyd no sooner but dispised straight" (Sonnet 129, 5)
References
- ^ Spiller 1992, p. 159.
- ^ Going 1947.
- ^ Neely 1978, pp. 363–364.
- ^ a b c Neely 1978, p. 363.
- ^ Neely 1978, p. 364.
- ^ Neely 1978, p. 367.
- ^ a b c Neely 1978, p. 368.
- ^ Neely 1978, p. 382.
- ^ Edmondson & Wells 2004, p. 15.
- ^ Neely 1978, p. 384.
- ^ Neely 1978, pp. 360–361.
- ^ Neely 1978, p. 361.
- ^ Neely 1978, p. 360.
- ^ Neely 1978, p. 369.
- ^ a b Neely 1978, p. 375.
- ^ Neely 1978, p. 381.
- ^ Neely 1978, p. 374.
- ^ Braden 2000.
- ^ Braden 2000, pp. 103–104.
- ^ Gajowski 1992, p. 21.
- ^ Sedgwick 1985.
- ^ Neely 1978.
Bibliography
- Braden, Gordon (2000). "Ovid, Petrarch, and Shakespeare's Sonnets". In Taylor, Albert Booth (ed.). Shakespeare's Ovid: The Metamorphoses in the Plays and Poems. Cambridge: ISBN 978-0-521-77192-4.
- Edmondson, Paul; ISBN 978-0199256112.
- Gajowski, Evelyn (1992). The Art of Loving: Female Subjectivity and Male Discursive Traditions in Shakespeare's Tragedies. Cranbury: ISBN 978-0874133981.
- Going, William T. (1947). "The Term Sonnet Sequence". JSTOR 2909278.
- Neely, Carol Thomas (Autumn 1978). "The Structure of English Renaissance Sonnet Sequence". JSTOR 2872643.
- Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1985). Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: ISBN 978-0231082730.
- Spiller, Michael R. G. (1992). The Development of The Sonnet: an Introduction. New York: ISBN 0-415-07744-3.[dead link]
Further reading
- Boyd, William (19 November 2005). "Two Loves Have I". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2007.
- Byrd, Katy; Harrod, Nathan. "Shakespeare's Sonnets". Archived from the original on 9 February 2007. Retrieved 5 February 2007.
- Dutschke, Dennis (1981). "The Anniversary Poems in Petrarch's Canzoniere". Italica. 58 (2): 83–101. JSTOR 478562.
- Evans, Gareth; Evans, Barbara Lloyd (1978). The Shakespeare Companion. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
- Everett, Glenn. "A Guide to the Sonnet". University of Tennessee. Archived from the original on 2007-02-05. Retrieved 2007-02-05.
- Freccero, Carla (2001). "Ovidian Subjectivities in Early Modern Lyric: Identification and Desire in Petrarch and Louise Labé". In Stanivukovic, Goran V. (ed.). Ovid and the Renaissance Body. ISBN 978-0802035158.
- McDonald, Russ (1996). The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents. New York: ISBN 978-0312100759.
- OL 6764957M.
- Vendler, Helen (1997). The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge: ISBN 978-0674637115.
- Yavneh, Naomi (1993). "The Ambiguity of Beauty in Tasso and Petrarch". In Turner, James Grantham (ed.). Sexuality & Gender in Early Modern Europe: Institutions, Texts, Images. Cambridge: ISBN 978-0521390736.